June 29, 2007

Bleg, And News

by hilzoy

Does anyone know how to find cached copies of old web pages? It seems like a useful skill to have. I thought of it just now because I just realized that John Derbyshire seems to have called (ironically? He was chanelling Betjeman) for the destruction of Washington DC and then thought better of it. Here's a blank box where, apparently, his post used to be, and here are some snippets of it that have survived elsewhere:

Thursday, 28 June 2007
Saeva Indignatio
No, I haven't contributed to the blogging on this latest round in the immigration wars. In part that's because I'm going through a very time-demanding phase of an unrelated writing project; in part because I feel (perhaps optimistically) I've written and posted enough on this topic over the years to have already made whatever useful contribution I can make; in part because NRO's Washington guys seem to have the thing pretty well in hand...

...But also, quite largely, because I have barely been able to trust myself to say anything. Watching the Senate exchanges, and the pro-Bill comments by our President and others, I have kept sinking into a state of quivering, bitter rage—not a common state for me. It's great that the Bill has gone down to defeat, but how on earth did it even get this far? Such terrible, unworkable, legislation, foisted on us with such arrogance and deceit? Is this our legislative system?

At one point yesterday I vented my bitterness in verse. I wrote a close parody of John Betjeman's famous 1937 diatribe against the city of Slough, directing my lines at Washington D.C. Some readers might find it a bit strong. My only excuse is that I was mad as hell, in the state Swift called saeva indignatio. I feel much better now. (And please note that I, like Betjeman, spared most of the inhabitants of the hated place.) Anyway, here are my verses.

Thoughts while watching a debate in the U.S. Senate on S.1639—the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" bill of 2007

What is it that these people lack that allows them to write and think such nonsense?

Bear in mind: (1) Derbyshire is a British citizen living in the US, calling for violence over what he sees as our insufficently restrictive immigration policy. The irony of his position evidently escapes him. (2) This isn't even in the top 10 of Derbyshire's offensive remarks. He's a self-described racist and homophobe, as well as somebody who has said that women are past their prime age of sexual attractiveness once they reach 18.

Why Derbyshire and his ilk aren't hooted off the national stage is a mystery . . .

Well, Derb is creepy, but there's nothing so awful in this that isn't also awful in the original Betjeman poem. (Awful in the sense of offensive, I mean, because Derb's skills are terrible. Rhyming "stink" with "everything" is only acceptable if you're Popeye.) In fact, Derb's version is, amazingly, less snobby; I feel like Betjeman is making fun of my relatives.

Of course there's still the whole idea that we're slaves because we pay taxes, which I don't get. Living in a company town and being beholden to its management, for example, seems a whole lot more unfree than having to write a check to the government while you're on your way to Greenbriar.

I disagree.
I think he is saying what many have been saying for a long time. That we have trashed the place so badly that destruction would put it and us out of our misery, quickly, rather than the slow, small, mean course of self destruction we are currently on.